The idea behind The Peach Truck involved selling Georgia peaches from the farm directly to the consumer.
The truck now travels around the nation selling peaches in parking lots, The Telegraph reported .
Stephen Rose says he now sells around two semitrailer loads of peaches a day. All of the peaches come from Georgia growers.
Rose says that social media marketing has been a key driver of the business. He says people go online to follow where the truck will be and line up by the hundreds to get 25-pound boxes of peaches.
He says the peaches sold from The Peach Truck go from the orchard to the customer in two days or less.
Rose grew up in Fort Valley — in the heart of Georgia peach country — and was friends with members of the Pearson family that grows peaches on its Pearson Farm, the newspaper reported.
He grew up eating Georgia peaches, but moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2010 and was disappointed with the quality of peaches there, he said.
A couple of years later, he was sitting on a front porch and talking to Will McGehee, who does marketing for Pearson Farm. McGehee said he had long dreamed of a way to quickly get peaches from the farm directly to the consumer, and Rose saw an opportunity, The Telegraph reported.
Rose started it as a sideline business, buying the peaches from Pearson wholesale and then selling them on the weekends out of a 1964 Jeep Gladiator. He sold 10 tons of peaches within five weeks and the business became so popular that he and his wife, Jessica, both left their 9-to-5 jobs, he said.
"They are basically the vehicle that we are getting fresher peaches into people's hands a lot faster than the traditional channel," McGehee said.
